What do the Manitoba PCs mean when they talk about parental rights? Find out, after the election

To PC Leader Heather Stefanson, the Progressive Conservative promise to bolster "parental rights" in Manitoba is a common-sense effort to combat the likes of online bullying and harassment.

To the other party leaders, this PC pledge is nothing but a cynical effort to rally fearful voters to the party's side.

Where does the truth lie? To find out, we might have to wait to see what happens after the election, assuming the PCs win a third consecutive term.

The party has declined to elaborate what its leader meant, precisely, when she promised to expand "the right to be involved in addressing bullying and other behavioural changes" on Aug. 17.

"We're going to see what that looks like. We're going to go through a consultation process," Stefanson said on Monday.

This took place after a CJOB radio debate where she declined to state whether Manitoba intends on following in the footsteps of Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.

In Saskatchewan, Premier Scott Moe said last week he's willing to use the notwithstanding clause — which allows governments to temporarily override certain sections of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms — to protect a new rule requiring parental permission for transgender and non-binary students under 16 to use different names or pronouns at school.

In New Brunswick, it's now mandatory for school staff to obtain parental consent before using the chosen names and pronouns of children under 16. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association filed a lawsuit against this gender-identity policy earlier this month.

Given the Manitoban tendency toward political moderation, regardless of the party in power, it's entirely possible a re-elected PC government would have no taste for a similar exercise in pushing Canadian constitutional boundaries.

Yet if that's the case, the premier won't say so. Neither will Obby Khan, the face of the PCs' "parental rights" promise on Tory-purchased billboards.

Khan, the PC candidate for Fort Whyte, said this plank in his party's campaign has more to do with ensuring school rules are updated for an era where kids have access to the internet in their hands.

"I see my face in billboards here and there and I'm proud of that," Khan said Tuesday during a PC campaign announcement, echoing Stefanson's pledge to find out later what precise form of expanded rights parents want to see.

"Right now it's about having that conversation, an extensive consultation with parents and teachers as we move forward with the ultimate goal of having everyone protecting our children," he said.

The implication of this rhetoric, according to Manitoba opposition leaders, is if you don't support this PC promise, you don't want to protect children.

To NDP Leader Wab Kinew, what the PCs call "parental rights" is simply "a wedge issue" intended to distract voters from more important matters.

To Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont, it's an effort to import American-style cultural-war rhetoric to a political jurisdiction where extreme polarization has never been part of the political landscape.

"They're importing Republican arguments from the Deep South of the U.S. that really don't have any place in Manitoba," Lamont said on Monday.

"We already have systems in place to deal with this and the PCs are pretending there's a problem that isn't there to scare people and frighten parents."

Despite that contention, there is evidence some Canadians are in fact engaged in an idea of parental rights that conforms to the conception in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.

An Angus Reid Institute poll of 3,016 Canadian adults with kids under the age of 18, conducted in late July from members of its forum panel, found 43 per cent said parents must consent to the pronouns their kids use in school. (For comparison purposes, a truly random sample of that size would have a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points.)

Dave Korzinksi, research director for Angus Reid, cautioned this finding does not mean pronoun-consent is a top-of-mind voter issue, anywhere in Canada.

"I think a lot of people don't see this as being particularly important to their own lives right now," he said, adding any political party that plays what he calls "culture-war games" could see the effort backfire.

Manitoba voters, Korzinski said, care a lot more about the state of health care and the cost of living. Those just so happen to be the main platform planks of the NDP and PCs, respectively.

• Read full coverage of the 2023 Manitoba election here

Pronoun consent in schools, in comparison, only affects a handful of parents, he said, even as it generates "passionate support" among people who like the idea.

"Up until four or five months ago, this issue didn't even exist in Canada. I think it's a little bit of throwing something at the wall and seeing if this works," Korzinski said.

"I think if you're winning on cost of living and health care, you're in a much better situation politically and during the campaign."